Indego bike share apps are the new SEPTA apps

As soon as Philly’s bike share program, Indego, launched in April, the city released a real-time data feed of the status of each of the system’s bike docks.

Indego plans to use the data to tweak the program accordingly (like adding more bikes in a part of the city that always has open docks). In the mean time, civic hackers have taken to building their own Indego apps. It reminds us of when SEPTA proactively released its data and many civic hackers jumped at the opportunity to build apps of their own.

Remember iSEPTA? Remember Baldwin and SEPTAlking? Well, here are the Indego versions of those early, third-party transit apps. (Feel free to tell us about your favorite Indego apps, as well as the ones we missed.)

• Indego’s official web app and B-cycle, its iOS app.
• Bike Me Now: Nick Weber and P’unk Ave’s Tom Boutell built this web app in “one wild Code for Philly sprint.” (They’re talking about the weekly civic hacking meetups that happen at Northern Liberties’ Devnuts and other parts of the city.) They use stoplight colors to show you the status of the docks closest to you, depending on what you’re looking for (either a bike or an open dock): green means go for it, yellow means there’s only a few open and red means they may be gone before you get there. It’s based on data from Indego’s API.
• Real Time Indego: An iOS app built by Penn undergrad Matt Chan that shows nearby docks and their current status. Chan also built a similar app for SEPTA’s Regional Rail.
• Bike Share Philly: An Android app built by Peter Chappy.
• Philly Bike Dock: An iOS app by O3 World’s John Amoratis.
• Bike Share Map: A web app that features bike share apps for so many cities around the world, including Philly. (h/t PhillyMag)

Also check out civic hacker James Tyack’s early analysis of Indego data.

(Also, Indego is hiring a web developer to maintain its site.)